The Closet Knocker's Sister
by elphie'sdaughter77
Summary: Irina's always been so practical; it was her sister who dreamed of silly things like Narnia. So what happens when a case of mistaken identity puts Irina where her sister ought to have gone? Rating may change. Sequel to The Closet Kn


Her name was Irina Mary Stephenson. She had seen her sister die.

It was the connection people made automatically when they met her. Nobody saw her as the star mathlete or the National Honor Society president or the girl with the best science average in the state. It was if they all had a glaze over their eyes that permitted them only to see what their memories allowed them to see: the pale, angry-faced slip of a girl dressed in black, standing at her sister's coffin with a tight face and willing herself not to cry. If she'd known then that this was how people would forever see her, she would have staved off tears much more easily.

Her actions on that day didn't even make sense to her. Her relationship with her sister had always been platonic, at best; why should she have cared? If her sister was puking her guts up in the bathroom, if she was popping those wretched pills from the medicine cabinet again and crying out in despair loudly enough to shake the dead from their graves—why should that have mattered to her? She had always felt, upon being roused to these awful sounds in the night, as if she were hearing a stranger—disgusted but indifferent. Her sister was, in essence, a stranger. They barely knew one another.

So why, on that one night—the night it all ended—had she gotten up from bed, sleepily tugged on her bathrobe, and gone to see what was the matter? What made that night any different from all the rest? What greater powers—not that she believed in any such thing, mind—had nudged her from the safety of her room to the strange, uncontrollable, frightening void that was her sister's constant domain?

It didn't matter, she reflected. How she got there didn't matter. What mattered was what she had seen there: her sister, lying on the floor of her walk-in-closet, beating her fist against the wall in the back with the steady rhythm of a hearbeat. Her eyes had been red and bugged-out—out of focus.

"_Somebody help_."

That was her cry, but it had been too late; her sister had slipped out of life before her eyes, quietly and peacefully as anything.

And now, Irina was alone.

And enjoying it.

Her sister, the bane of her life—with her fancies, her Narnia, her—horror of horrors—_imaginary friends_. She'd lived in a world of fancy and possibility, and what had become of her? A cold, early grave and a family torn apart. Irina preferred the realm of reality, of her precious math and science—things that _didn't_ change. Things you could rely on to be perfectly real and rational—exactly the opposite of the things her sister had loved so well.

Reality was just safer. Believing in things like Narnia—she'd never wasted her time. Living your whole life for a place that didn't exist was her sister's path. Irina Mary Stephenson, age thirteen years and three months, was carving out her own life.

~*~

One Friday afternoon found Irina alone in the house, studying her physical science textbook for a test she knew she didn't need to study for. Her mother was at work, trying to drown herself in busy work to fill the absence of Irina's sister. Her father…God, who even knew where he was? Out drinking with his buddies, probably—nowadays, her father's best friend was his beer bottle. How like her sister he was, preferring his own temporary fantasy to reality. Irina was like her mother in her practical approach to things.

For some reason—and later, she would never quite know what—it dawned upon her that Saturday—a full four days from today—she had a Mathlete tournament and still couldn't find her purple sweatpants. At the same time, she remembered exactly where those sweatpants were: her sister's closet.

With a sigh of defeat, Irina slammed the book shut. The sound was strangely echoey in the emptiness of the house. Trudging up the stairs, it didn't once perturb her that she was headed straight into the labrynith of her sister's old demons. They weren't hers. They couldn't hurt her.

Her sister's room had gone largely untouched since her death three months prior: same Harry Potter posters on the walls, same strange diagrams covering the corkboard, same towering stacks of books by the bed with the still-rumpled mattress. The closet was the only unadorned space in the room, save for five words scratched with something—a knife, maybe—into the wood of her closet—ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Irina ignored it, pushed right in. The closet was a mess, with shirts and dresses and pants strewn higglety-pigglety across the floor of it. Intermingling with these were pictures, in various states of rip: pictures of snowy woods, tape still clinging desperately to their edges. Narnia scenery. With a scornful snort, Irina pushed through. The purple sweatpants were in the very back; she was certain of this.

As she forced her way through the closet, she suddenly became aware of two things: that the closet seemed unusually large, and that it was freezing cold. That was especially odd; it was the middle of May. Frowning, Irina pawed through the racks, feeling a chill creeping up on her neck. What was going on now?

Suddenly, with a jerking motion, Irina's foot caught something slippery, and down she tumbled, into a soft pile of clothes on the floor. Dazedly, she blinked and looked up, momentarily disoriented.

A smooth curtain of deep green stared back.

With a yelp of shock, Irina clamored to her feet. White stuff was clinging to her clothes, freezing her hands. Trees, woods, mountains far off…

She was in Narnia. The place her sister had longed to go to; and the last place she had ever expected to find herself.


End file.
